


Truce

by EveandJohnny



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 06:59:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveandJohnny/pseuds/EveandJohnny
Summary: There are a lot of things Raleigh has come to terms with after the first time he had been back in battle. A truce with the ever annoying Chuck Hansen is not on the list of his priorities. But he takes his chances as he gets them.





	Truce

**Author's Note:**

> Hansensprotector.tumblr.com was looking for a fic in which Raleigh and Chuck could remove their personal issues in a clarifying talk before going into Operation Pitfall. Et voilá - here it is! At least I hope it's what they expected.

The double event has shaken Raleigh to the core. He has seen some pretty nasty fights in his career, and he has thought nothing would beat the one against Knifehead. But now here he is: killed two Kaijus in one go, with a co-pilot he has hardly had ever any practice with before. They had gotten smashed into buildings, thrown into the sea, caught some fairly vicious blows and fell from approximately ten thousand feet. Coming out of it with not so much as a scratch. To him, it should be old news; he is the veteran that shouldn’t be really bothered by it. But he is. Though most of this shock doesn’t come from the fight. He had quite enjoyed punching  Kaijus for real again after five years of absence. Still, there is this heavy feeling in his chest and in his gut and something like a void in his mind. Whenever he tries to grasp a certain thought it slips away like the fish in the clear creek beside their house in his childhood. The ones he and Yancy had tried to catch with their bare hands in summer, when the world had been less hostile and their family intact. He winces when he thinks back to those innocent days. How foolish he had been then, to think it all would last. But they probably had all been foolish in the entire Shatterdome, before the Kaijus had attacked.

Even Mako. He had seen it in her memories. She is scarred beyond repair, and scared, too, and yet she pushed through. Invented and reinvented Jaeger technology and killed two Kaijus in her very first mission. He admires her greatly, and if she is the only reason to pick up the crucial fight he will still do it. For her, he would walk through hell and back, and he knows that she would do the same for him.

He sits on a tier somewhere under LOCCENT, in the same spot he and Mako had sat after that first disastrous test in Lady G. It is one of the quieter places in the ‘Dome but it never gets really quiet in here anyway. The steady putter, the whirring and thrumming of the remaining Jaegers and ticktock of hammer blows has something soothing to it, though.

“I knew I would find you here” suddenly a rugged voice says behind him. Raleigh first has trouble figuring out who it is. He realizes that he had only heard the voice snide and snarling before, not calm and even a little bit friendly. So he’s more than surprised when Chuck Hansen drops down on the floor a couple of feet away. Raleigh doesn’t exactly know what to make of this attempt; he clearly remembers their hallway fight and he can still feel the bruises the little Australian bastard left on him. He would never admit it, at least not yet, but the kid is a good fighter, for his age anyway. He eyes him with a sideway glance and quickly tries to think of a witty reply. Apparently the kid is on some kind of peace mission; otherwise he would have charged up here like a bull, making use of his heavy, metal plated boots and would have adopted a far more offensive tone.

“How can I help you?” he finally asks and immediately admonishes himself as he sees the devilish grin creeping up on Chuck’s face.

“I think you can help me a great deal, now that I’ve seen you fighting. Not so much the washed-up has-been I had expected.”

Raleigh lets that sink in for a moment. He had expected a less friendly remark. He blinks like an owl before he finally says “It’s like cycling, you can’t really unlearn it, you know.”

Chuck snorts, but he absentmindedly stares over the Jaeger bay. “Cycling” he mutters to himself. “Haven’t done that in ages.”

As he says that, Raleigh remembers what Pentecost had told him about the Hansens on his flight from Alaska to Hong Kong. That when Scissure had attacked Sydney, Herc only had the opportunity to save one member of his family, and he chose Chuck. That since then, the kid had grown up in Shatterdomes all over the world, barely seeing the light of day, and enlisted at the age of sixteen. In simpler times, all that sixteen-year-olds had to worry about were football matches and how to ask your crush on a date. Not how to save the world from abysmal creatures. Seeing Chuck sitting here beside him, lost in thought and biting his lower lip, Raleigh realizes how young the kid actually is. There is nothing of the hard, arrogant jock who doesn’t shy away from picking a fight right under his father’s nose. Maybe, just maybe, Raleigh had been too harsh, had judged too early. Chuck had done the same, yes, but Raleigh was the older out of the two of them and he should have acted more maturely.

As some kind of peace pipe, he pushes a picture over the metal floor towards Chuck. When he notices the movement out of the corner of his eye, he looks to Raleigh questioningly. Raleigh just nods and so he picks it up. After a moment of inspection, he says “That’s your brother, right?” Chuck, of course, remembers the press appearances of the Becket brothers but he asks anyway because the people in the photo are far from the self-assured but reserved Alaskan Jaeger pilots. Here they are just two brothers having fun. Not the weight of the entire world on their shoulders.

Raleigh nods but doesn’t say anything. Chuck trolls a picture from the inner pocket of his heavy leather coat, looks at it with a longing sigh, and then shoves it gently to Raleigh.

“Your mum?” he asks with a furrowed brow as he studies the photo.

“Yep” Chuck says and the word catches in his throat.

After a moment, he says “I’m sorry” just as Raleigh says the same. They look up and smile at each other with one corner of their mouths. It’s not a declaration of never-ending friendship but it’s a step in the right direction. With a nod, Raleigh tells Chuck to go on, to tell his story. And Chuck does so, after inhaling deeply. “When I said ‘I wanted to come back from this mission’ I meant it. Hell, I still mean it! I’m a bit young for leaving this world just now, you know” he says and tries to smile but Raleigh hears the sadness in his voice. “And I thought you would just push me even further into the Kaijus' claws. I had regarded you a failure, crawling over that stupid wall like an insect. The very wall that should have made the Jaegers obsolete but in the end proved to be an absolute disaster. I saw you as an intruder, a traitor to all Jaeger pilots. Dad, of course, jumped to your defence, said you were some kind of extra badass for taking down that beast all on your own. I’ll give you that now, yeah. But back then I was right down green with envy. I was the best pilot in the entire PPDC - I still am” he adds with a cough and Raleigh grins in response. Then Chuck says on his final point “Why couldn’t I pilot a Jaeger on my own?”

Raleigh gets that this is more a rhetoric question, born from an overambitious mind. And Yancy had told _him_ to not get cocky. Now it was his turn to admit some flaws. “You know, Chuck, when I was your age, and that wasn’t that long ago, I was just like you. Man, I even remember saying to Yancy before going into the fight against Knifehead ‘What do you think, Yance, fifth notch on the belt?’ Little did I know that, yeah, it would be Gipsy’s fifth Kaiju kill but that it wouldn’t be ours. That I would lose my brother to that beast. When I was ‘crawling over that stupid wall’-” Chuck winces as Raleigh repeats his disrespectful words but he gets ignored “-I had time enough to go through the fight again and again. And I realized that it hadn’t been fate. That he hadn’t had to die this young. It had been our own stubbornness and our habit of defying rules and orders. If we hadn’t picked up the ship or at least had retreated from the scene like the Marshal had told us Yancy could be still alive.” His lips curl but it’s not yet a grin as he says “Even Mako thought me a risk for the undertaking.”

Chuck’s eyes go wide when he hears that. “Really?” he asks in utter disbelief. He had considered Mako and Raleigh had bonded the moment they had seen each other.

Raleigh nods, lips still curled “Really.” Then his tone gets more serious again. “But you cannot live on ‘what ifs’ or ‘what could have been’. I’ve learned that the hard way. You can just take what life gives you and make the best of it.” Then he looks to Chuck, and a real grin adorns his face. “Now that I’ve gotten to know you better I would also like to see you come back from this mission.” He extends a hand and after a moment of consideration, Chuck grabs it and shakes it firmly.

Raleigh gets on his feet, hesitates a second, then squeezes Chuck’s shoulder as he makes his way to the stairs. Chuck looks after him and smiles, this time genuinely.

 


End file.
